Friday 6 May 2022

Shouldn’t Observation Support Theory?

Bear with me in what follows it has a point to it. Empiricism seems to comes second to the current paradigm.  It shouldn’t do but that’s the way it usually ends up. Empiricism is the belief that all knowledge is based on real experience derived from observation or experimentation rather than theory. This thinking was stimulated by the rise of experimental science, which developed in the 17th and 18th centuries. But as time passed and presumptions flowed from the original experience, unsupported assumptions occasionally diverted from the observed facts and errors swayed the latest beliefs.

I was reading an article on a website dedicated to the history of archaeology, and I was interested to note that during the 19th and 20th century there were numerous finds of early man-made tools. The archaeologists involved included both professional and amateur scientists. They published literally hundreds of papers in all the most respected archaeological journals of their time and they are still available.  These finds number in the thousands. The articles were peer reviewed and the dating of the finds were, in the majority accepted.  But guess what?  At some point in the last century a huge number of those finds were either described as fraudulent or mistaken.

The reason for this volt-face was that in almost every case that was rejected, the date assigned to the substratum in which the tools were found along with the remains of apparently modern human bones, was said to be too early for them to have been genuine man-made tools - therefore their findings have been dismissed.   This did not fit in with the paradigm accepted throughout the world of archaeology that modern man could not have existed so long ago therefore the finds were fake or mistaken. 

The article was written by a highly respected and knowledgeable expert on prehistoric man-made tools and, using the latest scientific methods to re-examine a number of these tools which lie in dusty cupboards in many museums around the world, he declared the finds genuine and argued that the current paradigm was wrong and modern humans had existed many thousands of years longer than the current archaeological system allows.

The reason I have mentioned this, reminds me of our own case.  The archaeologists rejected those early findings because they didn’t agree with what they had been taught.  Modern science rejects our finding because doesn’t fit in with what we have been taught.  We believe that the evidence that Johann Bessler’s perpetual motion was genuine and there is excellent evidence in the form of direct observation supporting this conclusion, but this evidence was dismissed because it didn’t fit within the current belief both then and now.

JC

30 comments:

  1. Bessler was like a stage magician who pulled a rabbit out of his top hat in a theater one night. Everyone in the audience clearly saw the magician do it and before he did, he showed everyone the hat was empty and he even pulled up his sleeves to show he didn't have a rabbit hidden up one of them. At the end of his performance, he offered to reveal the secret to anyone in the audience for a single payment of ten million dollars in cash, but no one could afford to pay it. Then he left the theater, was run over by a truck, and killed.

    Even though the scientists could not explain exactly how he had done it, they authoritatively announced that it had to have been hoaxed because it is not physically possible to pull a living rabbit out of an empty hat and anyone who thinks it is should seek out the care of a psychiatrist as soon as possible.

    Years later a few people from the audience who had seen it and others who had heard about the magician's performance that night remained firmly convinced that rabbits could be pulled out of empty hats and tried to figure out how to do it themselves. Most of them failed, but a few claimed they had also done it. However, they never offered any convincing proof that they had.

    After the truck accident, the original rabbit that the magician had pulled out of his hat that night managed to escape back into the wild where he ate as much as he wanted and got busy making more rabbits. He did not care what humans thought about how the magician had pulled him out of his empty top hat that night. In fact, it gave the little rabbit much pleasure to know that he was the only living creature on Earth who knew exactly how the magician had done it.

    PM Dreamer

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    1. That magician probably used a hat with a secret compartment in the top part of it that had the rabbit hidden inside of it. When he reached into the hat, he just opened the compartment up and then pulled the rabbit out. That is the only possible way to do it...I think.

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    2. Maybe that magician found a rare mutant rabbit that had the ability to turn itself invisible and he trained it to turn invisible and then reappear whenever he wanted it to. The rabbit was actually in his top hat all the time and not in some cramped secret compartment, but was invisible so when he showed the inside of the hat to the audience, it only looked like it was empty. Then he gave some signal that made the rabbit reappear again just before he pulled it out of the hat. I recall reading somewhere that some marine researchers found a rare species of jellyfish that is actually completely invisible in sea water and it's an ability it evolved to hide from its hungry predators. Why couldn't a defenseless little rabbit species do the same thing after millions of years of evolution only on land and in the open air?

      jason

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    3. Anon 05.01, A group of knowledgable people were present, and they all testified that the hat did not have a secret compartment, after being allowed to inspect it. They even sprinkled pepper into the hat to see if the hidden rabbit would sneeze.
      There was no rabbit in there.
      One of them suggested that maybe the rabbit was microscopic, hence not perceptible to the naked eye, and by using compressed air the hoaxer was able to "somehow" blow the rabbit up.

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    4. All very interesting theories and here's some more information to ponder:

      The police investigating the accident scene found the magician's top hat and carefully examined it. It had no secret compartment in it. They also found the shattered remains of a small magic wand the magician used during his performances. It contained a crushed battery, some wires, some badly damaged electrical components, and a little light bulb in its tip. It looked like he could have pressed a switch on it to light up the tip and make the wand look like it had some magical powers. It was dismissed as just a prop he used to distract the attention of the audience when he did a trick. The corpse of the rabbit was never found and no one in the town noticed a live rabbit running around any of the streets after the accident.

      Many of the theater's audience members claimed that, just before he pulled the rabbit out of his top hat, he tapped its brim with the wand. Some said he tapped in three times, some two times, and some only once. Other audience members didn't remember him having a wand at all. Some said they heard him mutter some unintelligible words before pulling the rabbit out of his hat. Others said they didn't hear anything.

      After the accident, the hat and wand somehow got lost and the police are still trying to locate them. Everyone remains baffled as to how the magician managed to pull a rabbit out of his empty hat that night. The scientists continue to claim it was just hoaxed in some way, but, they still haven't explained exactly how it was hoaxed. They said it was a good thing that no one was stupid enough to pay him the ten million dollars he wanted for his secret method. Some are actually relieved that the magician is dead so he won't get another chance to scam someone out of a lot of money by selling him the mysterious secret to his phony "pull a rabbit out of an empty hat trick".

      PM Dreamer

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    5. I think i have worked out how he did, the bloody scammer.
      After retrieving the empty hat from the committee, who had thoroughly inspected it. He then proceeded to open a chest on the stage, take a live rabbit out of it, which he then stuffed in the hat in full view of the audience, he was then booed of the stage by everyone.
      Once behind the scenes, he took a pill, to protect himself from the effects of the time machine he had carefully concealed earlier. The whole world went back in time to the exact moment he retrieved the empty hat and that is when he produced the rabbit.
      The fact that everyone had gone back in time fifteen minutes is probably why the audience had different recollections of how the thieving git actually performed his despicable act of deception. Some of them had a vague souvenir from the two demonstrations and they got confused.
      It's a good job we don't need any facts, to prove he was a lying, cheating scoundrel. A perfectly plausible eventuality is plenty enough evidence, that we were not wrong about it being impossible.

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    6. @RH46
      But, if the entire universe went back in time except for the pill protected magician with the rabbit in his hat, couldn't that result in there suddenly being TWO magicians and TWO rabbits on stage?! Besides that potential time travel paradox, the all knowing scientists would quickly dismiss any explanation involving backward time travel as impossible because it violates Einstein's theory of relativity by allowing an effect to precede its cause.

      That rabbit out of the hat trick is one of the oldest performed on stage. Here's how it is done IF one is using a small magician's table to support the hat:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJfoTcRA9sg

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    7. @anon 02:20
      Thanks for the link to that interesting video. However, the magician in this tale did not use a "magician's table" when he performed his trick on stage that night. He just held the hat in one hand, tapped its brim with the wand in his other hand, stuck the wand under his first arm, and reached into the top hat with his then free hand and pulled out the rabbit. He had his sleeves pulled up to show his forearms and the hat was later found to have no hidden compartment in it.

      Here's some more information that may help those pondering this apparently impossible trick.

      The police, trying to locate relatives of the magician so they could take his body and have it buried, found and entered his apartment. It was in a shabby, low rent district of the town.

      His apartment was a mess. There were piles of old magazines, newspapers, unwashed dishes, and empty liquor bottles everywhere. The place smelled bad. On a table was a small empty cage that he had kept his rabbit in. On a desk they found a thick notebook. The notebook contained various sketches showing magic tricks he was working on and other things that looked like inventions, circuit diagrams, mathematical formulas, occasional scribbled descriptions that were hard to read, and the last few pages even had drawings of the magic wand he used.

      The police never located his relatives and his body was eventually cremated and the ashes buried on public land. Not understanding the contents of his notebook, they gave it to a city engineer to evaluate in case it contained anything of value. The engineer didn't understand any of it and gave it to a scientist friend of his to check out. The scientist briefly flipped through it and decided it was just a lot of meaningless nonsense made by someone with mental problems. The notebook was eventually discarded along with the few other possessions of the magician that the police recovered.

      Years later only a few still remembered the details of the magician's performance that night which were briefly mentioned in a local newspaper article. Whenever scientists are told of the details of what everyone saw that night in the theater, they just laugh and say that the incident only proves how a skilled magician can fool so many people with a clever trick because average, nonscientific people like the ones in the theater that night are so gullible that they will easily believe anything that they see or are told. The scientists then say that they, because they are so highly educated, could never be so easily fooled.

      Yet, to this day those highly educated scientists are still unable to explain exactly how the magician's impossible trick was done.

      PM Dreamer

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    8. @PM Dreamer
      Although I still like my "invisible rabbit species theory" to explain how that magician's impossible trick was done, you've provided some more information that now makes me lean toward a new theory. Here goes.

      That magician wasn't just a down on his luck burnout managing to survive by performing cheap magic tricks in his town. He was actually a brilliant theoretical physicist who lost his professorship at a prestigious university because the dean of its graduate physics department considered his theories to be too radical and a potential embarrassment to the university. He was summarily kicked out, but vowed to someday prove to the world that his theories were correct.

      Although forced to live in squalor, he devoted any spare time and money he had to developing a working matter teleportation device! It took years, but he finally managed to construct one and miniaturize it until he could fit it into that magic wand he used during his performances. The thing wasn't very powerful, but with it he was able to teleport his pet rabbit from the cage in his rented room to any location not too far away when he pressed the button on the battery powered wand.

      That night in the theater, that is exactly what he did. Everyone saw the empty hat. He then tapped it with the magic wand and...presto!...the rabbit was instantly teleported from his cage a mile or so away and materialized inside of the hat!

      The magician wanted the ten million dollars for the secret of his trick because that was the amount he thought his years of labor to develop the invention were worth and whoever paid him that amount would then own his revolutionary invention. But, as with Bessler, no one had that kind of cash available to buy it. The scientist who later viewed the magician's notebook and wrote it off as nonsense was totally incompetent to evaluate such an advanced device just as the scientists of Bessler's day were, without being allowed to see inside of them, incompetent to understand how his wheels could possibly have worked.

      Actually, if anyone could invent a teleportation device it might make a pm wheel immediately possible. When a wheel's weights reached the bottom of the wheel, then they would immediately be teleported up to the top of the wheel again. One side of the wheel would always have weights on it and the other side would always have no weights on it.

      Hmm...didn't Bessler write something about his wheels being full and heavy on one side and empty and light on the other? Maybe he was using a matter teleporter in them?!

      jason

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    9. Jason, you are a genius.
      You've solved both problems. with one solution. Teleportation.
      So it was true that it was amazingly simple and that a carpenters lad could build one. An MT13 hanging anvil type setup with the teleportation machines fixed to it, one at the bottom to send and the other at the top to receive, nothing could be simpler. I certainly wouldn't want to pay 20'000 thalers for it, that's for sure.
      I was going to order a couple of teleportation machines from Amazon to prove that this is how Bessler did it, but apparently, they haven't been invented yet, and my time machine still doesn't work so i can't get any right now. We will just have to wait until they are invented so as to prove categorically that Bessler, and the infamous Rabbit producer, were not frauds.

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    10. Jason does have a nice explanation for that impossible hat trick. Teleportation could do it. It would also make possible the ultimate overbalanced pm wheel but only if the device used less energy to teleport a weight from the wheel's 6:00 to its 12:00 position than a weight delivered as it dropped back down from the 12:00 to 6:00 position again.

      Matter teleporters do not exist and may never exist, but there must be some simple mechanical way of getting the same effect. You could just have more weights descending on one side of a wheel than are rising on the other side and the excess lost GPE by the descending side weights would drive the wheel, but not for long because eventually all of the weights would be at the bottom of the wheel. This is why those recirculating water screw machines designed by Robert Fludd never worked when anyone tried to actually construct one. You need to get the effect while always keeping the same number of weights on both sides of a turning wheel.

      Here's a photo of one of Fludd's designs:

      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/WaterScrewPerpetualMotion.png/375px-WaterScrewPerpetualMotion.png

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    11. Jason has a nice solution to this story by PM Dreamer which I was not expecting. It fits all of the details we got, but unfortunately requires something even more advanced than a pm wheel to make it work!

      Also I think that simple mechanism you are all looking for has already been found! Look at Ken B's wheel video again and notice what happens to the weights as they rise from 6 to 9 o'clock. They don't just start moving back toward their stops again. They actually swing in the opposite direction of the turning wheel! That forces their vertical speed to slow down for part of the wheel's turn and they then regain GPE at a slower rate than the descending side weights lose their GPE. That causes the descending side weights to lose GPE faster than those ascending side weights regain it. That means there is going to be some extra GPE available to use to speed up the wheel or power something attached to its axle.

      I think that ascending side swing of a weight toward a wheel's axle between 6 and 9 o'clock is the real secret of Bessler's wheels and how they managed to get their energy even though the weights fall and rise through the same vertical distance in a gravity field that is supposed to be conservative. Also you always have the same number of weights on both sides of a wheel.

      I've always liked those machines Fludd designed even though they don't work. I once saw something like them that used marbles instead of water. You poured a load of marbles into the top of the thing and then they descended to a bottom part and along the way powered a little belt with buckets on it that would keep carrying marbles from the bottom to the top and dumping them out at the top. The thing would run for several minutes but then stop when the supply of marbles at the top was gone.

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    12. Here's a Fludd inspired German design using two Archimedean waterscrews:

      https://c8.alamy.com/comp/A0XEY2/illustration-from-theatrum-machinarum-novum-1661-by-georg-andreas-A0XEY2.jpg

      Here's a short bio I found online about Robert Fludd who was born in 1574 in Bearsted, Kent, England and died on September 8th, 1637 in London:

      "Robert Fludd, also known as Robertus de Fluctibus, was a prominent English Paracelsian physician with both scientific and occult interests. He is remembered as an astrologer, mathematician, cosmologist, Qabalist and Rosicrucian. Fludd is best known for his compilations in occult philosophy. He had a celebrated exchange of views with Johannes Kepler concerning the scientific and hermetic approaches to knowledge."

      Bessler was born 43 years after Fludd died and would have been familiar with his machines. Possibly some of the metal ball machines in MT were inspired by Fludd's early water powered machines.

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    13. Thanks to everyone who contributed to my Bessler-like mystery story. It was only fiction, of course.

      I didn't intend to actually supply a solution to how the magician did that trick. My real goal was to just present a situation that seemed impossible with a few details in order to show how it could lead to a lot of possible solutions. This was to prove the old saying "When the facts are few, the theories are many" and all of the solutions offered certainly demonstrated that as well as how creatively people on this blog can think.

      I was surprised by the teleportation theory, but it is certainly one possible solution although probably an unlikely one. With the actual Bessler story we have much the same situation. A few facts about something that seems impossible, but that stimulates everyone to come up with his own solution. The question is whether or not any of those solutions will be more likely than invisible rabbits or teleportation wands were in this fictional story?!

      Time will tell...

      PM Dreamer

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  2. Could you provide a link to the article?

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    1. I can’t unfortunately, as I read the article several months ago and I can’t find a reference to it. The reason I wrote about is because I was reminded of it by a reference to the idea in a website which popped up in my email box. The words which struck a chord were, “Inference from Absence, the Case of Archaeology”. I remember reading them a while back and had already considered writing a blog on the subject. You can find similar stuff by googling those words.

      One example: ‘ What are some of the possible problems of archaeological interpretation?
      Answer. Answer: Artefacts are tangible objects that have once been used by people in the past. The problem facing archaeological interpretation is that when an artefact is found, there is no one alive today (and hasn't been for up to thousands of years) that made, used, or saw the object in operation.’

      So you have date the substrate in which they are found.

      JC

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  3. John Collins, How did Amy's surgery go----------------------sam

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    1. Hi, thanks for asking. The surgery was postponed because she had a Covid test three days before and it indicated positive. She had no symptoms but due to her sensitivity to certain drugs and having to fight infection the doctor said it might not be safe for her to undergo surgery until she tested negative. She’s devastated but resilient and she’ll be ready when they are.

      JC

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  4. and so, now that much time has passed and the wizardry has been uncovered what do we do? The story has been so intensely studied, THOSE people who should know have not come forth with a working model and it was now being held at arms length so to protect oneself from belng associated with it , but should it ?

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    1. JC said "Empiricism seems to comes second to the current paradigm. It shouldn’t do but that’s the way it usually ends up. Empiricism is the belief that all knowledge is based on real experience derived from observation or experimentation rather than theory. This thinking was stimulated by the rise of experimental science, which developed in the 17th and 18th centuries. But as time passed and presumptions flowed from the original experience, unsupported assumptions occasionally diverted from the observed facts and errors swayed the latest beliefs...

      ... Modern science rejects our finding because doesn’t fit in with what we have been taught. We believe that the evidence that Johann Bessler’s perpetual motion was genuine and there is excellent evidence in the form of direct observation supporting this conclusion, but this evidence was dismissed because it didn’t fit within the current belief both then and now."

      I factor-in the power of social media to sway thoughts, either overtly or covertly. Never before was the sharing of ideas so easy and with such great reach (for good or bad). With that 'influence' comes responsibility. Science, including medicine etc, has progressed on the back of rational observations and hypothesis (fact based experience), testing to show repeatability, and predictability of the hypothesis. Rather than anecdotal 'evidence' and 'belief' that requires no such self-control of 'standards' of rigor and peer review etc. Open slather free-fro-all generally.

      You can tell I'm skeptical of social media and 'influencers', and the 4th estate to some degree, in general, whose motives can be questionable most often. Dangerous times imo to trust hearsay and opinion above empirical evidence and rational debated arguments.

      In Bessler's case I believe the story is more than credible, with enough educated rational men to have witnessed and reported on it that I am convinced he did indeed find something 'very simple, but deeply hidden' in the 'wheel work of nature' to drive his wheels around in a conservative gravity field.

      He ascribed his success to finding his mechanical solution to his great diligence in his search. It is there to be found (same as for him), but it won't be easy to unearth without significant digging and poking around into matters of Galileo Simple Machines mechanics that the Toy Page suggests, imo.

      It is my choice to believe, and this is where I hope my focus is most of the time, rather than in neigh-sayers and doubters who have a crisis of conviction and follow the heard mentality and education.

      -f

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    2. That "something very simple" was just a mechanical arrangement that made sure each descending side weight in his wheels lost more gpe dropping from 12:00 down to 6:00 than then it had to gain back to rise from 6:00 back up to 12:00 again. That difference in gpe then came out of a wheel to work anything attached to its axle. But what very simple mechanical arrangement did he use? The physicists say it does not exist and Bessler was just an 18th century scammer trying to enrich himself. But Bessler found something and if he hadn't we wouldn't all still be talking about his wheels today and trying to duplicate them. But, then again, if it was so simple, why hasn't anyone else ever found it? That's a bothersome question that even the Bessler believers have trouble answering.

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    3. "Anonymous 8 May 2022 at 23:04 said ..

      That "something very simple" was just a mechanical arrangement that made sure each descending side weight in his wheels lost more gpe dropping from 12:00 down to 6:00 than then it had to gain back to rise from 6:00 back up to 12:00 again. That difference in gpe then came out of a wheel to work anything attached to its axle.

      But what very simple mechanical arrangement did he use?

      The physicists say it does not exist .. if it was so simple, why hasn't anyone else ever found it?"

      .........................

      The fallacy of your argument is self evident, to me. In a rotating wheel all mass must have its GPE replenished (restored). There is no known way (only imagined), or lucid theory based on real evidence, to have an object lose less GPE whilst descending than required on the gain-back ascent ! With balance left over to extract as Work.

      The second fallacy is that mechanical machines are NOT always Galileo Simple Machines. AFAWK, ALL mechanical Machines ARE Galileo Simple Machines. There are no exceptions ! This means that any combination of leverage devices and Mechanical Advantage (MA) are conservative ! i.e. obey Archimedes Law of Levers, at ALL times. Therefore GPE down will always equal GPE up, not considering system frictional dissipative losses, for a non-runner.

      We know B. said some important things about his wheels. One is (paraphrased) that an ounce here or there did not make a jot of difference to the wheel turning merrily away i.e. it did not need build execution exactness, and it was completely unfazed by asymmetric down and up GPE theories, or some such.

      What he did say was that his true Mechanical PM Principle produced a "preponderance", which he also called an "excess impetus". Also 'translated' as "excess weight", and .. weight is a force. Karl described it as producing an "innate momentum".

      "The physicists say it does not exist .. if it was so simple, why hasn't anyone else ever found it?"

      Because we have reality disconnects and forget that ALL Mechanics is Conservative Galileo Simple Machines. We go for the 'Hail Mary' construction and combination of machines and other low hanging fruit, that brings us no closer to a viable solution. Tho clearly B. also used conservative simple machines (leverage and MA) that he combined an such a way that a deeply hidden 'dynamic' artifact became known to him, which caused the excess impetus of his wheels, imo. Where imbalance did lead to restoration of internal GPE's PLUS excess motive force. Not Positional Imbalance leading 'directly' to sustained rotation, but to the producing of an asymmetric and entirely usable, and ultimately describable, and predictable, and repeatable, force.

      And the Toy's Page and MT hide it, imo !

      -f

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    4. @Fletcher
      I think you misinterpreted what anon 23:04 originally wrote when you wrote "There is no known way (only imagined), or lucid theory based on real evidence, to have an object lose less GPE whilst descending than required on the gain-back ascent !"

      No, anon 23:04 actually said that the descending side weights lost MORE GPE during their descent than they gained back during their ascent. This is a valid way of explaining how Bessler's wheels worked IF there was some mechanism he found that could make a gravity field behave as though it was NOT "conservative" at least inside of one of his wheels. It would allow an accumulation of energy to take place in the wheel over time that would become rotational kinetic energy to accelerate it or to allow it to drive attached machinery to its axle. The question I have is where did that accumulating energy come from that a wheel used to accelerate itself or power attached machines?

      John sporadically suggests that energy somehow came from gravity which he likens to a "wind" blowing through one of Bessler's wheels. Ken B says it comes from the energy equivalent of the masses of a wheel's weights and in his view the weights would very gradually lose mass as a wheel continued to run and perform work.

      I notice most pm chasers just tend to ignore this issue completely or suggest there is some magical process that can make energy appear out of nowhere. That last one is what really infuriates the scientists and makes them view all pm chasers as delusional cranks who believe in magic. Saying Bessler's wheels could put out energy is fine because they obviously did so. BUT, we also have to have a source for that energy that the scientists can accept as plausible. However, I guess if a working wheel ever shows up people will be less concerned about how it works than the fact that it does work. Let's hope that day arrives soon.

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    5. "The physicists say it does not exist .. if it was so simple, why hasn't anyone else ever found it?"

      Further ... HOW 'simple' do you / we think .. CAN you / we think ?

      Not simple enough I'll wager !

      Let me give the question some perspective .. and see where you rate yourself in the continuum, probably not as close to the far left of 'simple' as you think.

      First off .. B. did not pull a rabbit from a hat (we all know how that trick is done), figuratively .. he pulled a rabbit from his arse.

      I do not denigrate his mechanical achievements at all, for those who think I'm hating on him. I have huge respect for his analytical and observational abilities. ** I am being deliberately coarse because I want to shake you / us out of our complacency and get your attention.

      It was so simple it was embarrassingly 'simple'. The mechanism that produced the excess impetus. Proof of this is that Karl did not buy the wheels, or the knowledge and rights, to how it was done. Tho he clearly saw with his own eyes, and understood, how the rabbit (acceleration / force) appeared. He would not have spent 5 minutes then went to lunch. It was just not worth it to him, for whatever reasons. Maybe because it was just too simple - embarrassingly simple, and he might cop some flak and look inept and gullible to some in retrospect (as some of us might also feel in his shoes). That 'dirt' simple !

      Moreover .. B. himself said (paraphrased) that a buyer might feel cheated and want their money back ! That's some confidence (not) in his technology ! The presumption being that it was not earth shattering technology - somewhat of a plain Jane - 'vanilla' / boring, might be over selling it !

      Not a magicians trick, or even a clever deception - a simple structure or application that when added gave an excess impetus, imo ! If in doubt then think about the workings of MT's 44 and 48. One is two wheels swapping spheres (no weighted levers etc). The other is a sphere wheel with elevator lift to axle. In both cases the natural gearing is not enough to keep up the replacement rate of balls. And they loss GPE until they stop. If the gearing is increased to keep up the restoration rate it fails to move because there is no asymmetric force. Yet B. strongly hints that both these could be made to Work and be 'runners'. WITH and WHEN the addition of separate and additional structures or application is present.

      The technology was hardly worth calling technology. That basic simple, imo ! That's my perspective and context !

      -f

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    6. "Anonymous 9 May 2022 at 01:25 said ..

      @Fletcher
      I think you misinterpreted what anon 23:04 originally wrote when you wrote "There is no known way (only imagined), or lucid theory based on real evidence, to have an object lose less GPE whilst descending than required on the gain-back ascent !"

      No, anon 23:04 actually said that the descending side weights lost MORE GPE during their descent than they gained back during their ascent. This is a valid way of explaining how Bessler's wheels worked

      IF there was some mechanism he found that could make a gravity field behave as though it was NOT "conservative"

      at least inside of one of his wheels."

      -------------------------------

      You seem to be hypothesizing it is both rational and possible to find a way thru application of "mechanics" to make << gravity acceleration >> different for each side of the wheel, thus a GPE differential of substance to materialize for same height lost and gained each side of the axle. I strongly disagree that it is both possible and rational, about as likely as breaking the Law of Levers imo.

      As you will be aware the two most common approaches are the 'gravity wheel' theory, and the 'inertia wheel' theory, where inertia is somehow manipulated to advantage. Both seem equally challenging theories, as gravity acceleration is effectively an all pervading constant value at earths surface, and inertia is unchanging, regardless of where an object is in altitude above the earths surface out into deep space.

      Yet somehow B. beat the intimidating accountant. If his solution ain't 'adjusting' gravity's acceleration on mass, nor breaking the Law of Levers, then it kinda narrows the field. Tho thousands have (including me at various times), and continue to, beat the horse, imo.

      -f

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    7. Fletcher,
      Are you familiar with the history of Ignaz Semmelweis?
      The "underground minors paradox" is a more recent example where the science of medicine lacks a scientific attitude, not to mention the coronavirus pandemic response, which is about as scientific as a flat earthers convention.
      We mustn't confuse science with scientists. Scientists are supposed to represent science, but unfortunately there are many that are more interested in themselves than science.
      The reality of Bessler's wheel, everything that was known at the time, was perceived as being perpetual motion.
      When reality contradicts a theory, it is not reality that needs to be modified, with plausible eventualities and hypotheses. Theories can be changed with these tools, our perception of reality can only be changed with facts.
      Science does not tell us that Bessler was a hoax, scientists do. It has never been scientifically proved, it is simply an assumption and assumptions have no place in science when it comes to determining facts.

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    8. Hi RH .. yes I've heard of him, and the miners paradox. Yes, you are right. Scientists are not science, and like most humans are not always objective, in every situation, tho probably more than most as a group. And the facts do not change to meet the science. It is up to us to prove with facts that Bessler was not a fraud. In the mean time hopefully considered hypothesis and theories are as good as it gets.

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  5. A good observation and comparison John. And about the Rabbit, The Prince looked inside the hat, and a smarter man (Leibniz) than most scientists that have ever lived, said there was not a rabbit in there.. The artist said that there exist only one way to achieve what have demonstrated. Before we look for "dis"-confirmation we at least will have to re-create to same trick. It should easily be possible to recreate the experiment, if we think we already know everything, (thus the methods he applied). If not, we should listen to the Prince and Leibniz, they were way better positioned to have an opinion about this, than you, me or any book-smart-scientist. Because as Bessler said. The answer is NOT in the books.. it*s in nature..

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  6. This youtuber seems to be getting into animating "classic" pm machines. Here's a video he made of his effort to animate Fludd's machine. It's not that accurate and he seems confused about why it did not work, but I give him credit for giving it a try. Notice the background image of Bessler's Kassel wheel!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjZ1NEmgqtE

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  7. Simple Simple Simple There is more moment arm on one side than the other

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The True Story of Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machine.

On  6th June, 1712, in Germany, Johann Bessler (also known by his pseudonym, Orffyreus) announced that after many years of failure, he had s...